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03 June 2016

Free For All Friday No. 394

This time last year I was about to embark on our grand trip of North America. This weekend I'm in Rotterdam for the Van der Spek meet up. But getting here was looking very doubtful at the beginning of the week due to the French and Belgium train strikes.... but I got here.

Someone said to me 'You really are determined to get there' when they heard how I was planning to get there... well it worked...

In brief I swapped train tracks for wings! I flew on Wednesday from my local airport in France to London, I stayed over night in London and then I caught a flight on Thursday to Rotterdam! Yes that sounds crazy, but some of the alternative routes were even more bizarre. They challenged my Filofax world map!

My pages for this week have lots of crossed out notes and new details written in. But that is the great thing about a flexible planning system it can handle changes so easily.

So what is the most unusual route you have taken in similar circumstances?

But of course it is Friday so please do feel free to discuss anything planner related.

3 comments:

I actually only had to get from Galway in Ireland to London, but due to an airport strike I decided to finally try out "sail and rail" which is a train/ferry connection offer through which you can theoretically get from any place in Ireland to any place in England for £ 79 (return!). But it seems that nobody ever does it, it cannot be booked online from the Irish side, and to whichever train station you go, they've never heard of it. So first of all it takes a lot of convincing to actually buy the ticket. Because it cannot be used on all trains on the English side and there were 5 point where I had to change connections in a very short window, it took me almost 20 hours at the end, instead of the 12 that the system calculated for my route. However it made me realize that flying is not that much more convenient in comparison, at least not when you live a certain distance away from an airport and, in my case, don't have a car and depend on public transport to get there. While a flight by itself is very quick, the requirement to be at the airport 2 hours earlier, the lack of a perfect bus connection for this timeframe, the usual arrival at an airport far from the city centre, always make it at least a half day endeavour anyway - so I rather spend that time seeing something out of a train window.

I have a planner conundrum. I have a pocket Mont Blanc binder that I use as a travel wallet, and the only other place I've been able to find it online is on Janet Carr's blog. The Mont Blanc store in Vegas first tried to tell me that it was't an authentic item (inserts, dividers and all!), then they said it must be old. Not "vintage", just worthless to the clerk. Help me Philofaxers, you're my only hope! I am curious as to what the model and manufacture year is, especially since it is priceless while we're travelling.